Erdoğan inverts reality

News item:

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday waded into the controversy over comments by Turkey’s prime minister equating Zionism to a crime against humanity, rebuking the leader of the NATO ally by saying such remarks complicate efforts to find peace in the Middle East.

Kerry said the Obama administration found the statements by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “objectionable” and he stressed the “urgent need to promote a spirit of tolerance, and that includes all of the public statements made by all leaders” at a news conference in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

“We not only disagree with it; we found it objectionable,” Kerry said.

Far be it from me to be unappreciative when our administration does something positive. Erdoğan’s statement was indeed ‘objectionable’, although I find the formulation that it “complicates efforts to find peace” somewhat stupid. As if that’s the issue!

The problem is that the statement is far more than just objectionable. Because if Zionism is a crime against humanity, then the existence of the Jewish state is also a crime, a crime committed by the Jewish people, and the only acceptable redress for the ‘victims’ of this crime is to take the state away from the Jews and give it to them.

Erdoğan is inverting reality. The truth is that the Jewish people suffered centuries of oppression and mistreatment in their diaspora, and finally succeeded in returning home. In a rare moment of collective moral clarity, the nations of the world recognized the rightness of this solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ and implemented it in the declaration of the Palestine Mandate. Although this moral moment was short — the British quickly fell back into darkness and tried to prevent the creation of a Jewish state — it came into being despite their efforts.

Since then, the enemies of the Jewish state and the Jewish people have been trying, by increasingly sophisticated means including war, terrorism, and lately a combination of these with a carefully planned and executed diplomatic and psychological assault aimed at Israel’s supporters and Israelis themselves, to reverse history and re-disperse the Jewish people.

Reality inversion is a tactic that has proven especially effective. So a ficticious ‘people’, the ‘Palestinians’, is created out of heterogeneous Arabs, a false history is created for them, and Jewish history and provenance in the land of Israel is denied. These Palestinians are falsely cast as victims of oppression, expulsion and genocide, when this is both the historical experience of the Jewish people and what their enemies are trying to perpetrate against them yet again.

Israel is accused of targeting children and noncombatants, committing terrorism, establishing an apartheid regime, being racist. But of course it is (for example) the PLO, Hamas and Hizballah who target civilians and children, and who are proud to announce that when ‘Palestine’ is declared, no Jews will live in it.

Self-defense by Jews is particularly offensive to their enemies — because, you see, how dare we claim to have a right of self-defense when we are not on the same level of humanity as our attackers — so Erdoğan was especially infuriated by the short Gaza war of 2008-9, and even more by the self-defense by Israeli commandos against the thugs that tried to kill them on the deck of the Mavi Marmara.

It is important for possibly naive Westerners (including Israeli officials) to grasp that it really doesn’t matter if Israel had a right to intercept the ships, who provoked the violence on the Mavi Marmara, what weapons they had, who fired the first shots or whether the Israelis had any options short of live fire. It is always unthinkable for Jews to kill Muslims, in this case Turks!

The existence of a Jewish state in the ‘Muslim Middle East’ is a similar affront to Arab and Muslim manhood. So in a way it is natural for them to invert reality and see our defensive actions as aggression. But it is also a deliberate tactic, a form of ‘big lie’ technique.

The struggle to destroy the Jewish state that has been carried out since 1948, and which has now reached a truly remarkable degree of sophistication, is in fact the ongoing crime against humanity. The greatest reality inversion of all is to present this extended war against the Jewish people, this multifaceted enterprise that is intended to result in the end of the only Jewish state and probably yet another genocide, as a positive struggle on behalf of the ‘Palestinians’!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 1st, 2013 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Antisemitism, Reality Inversion alerts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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One Response to “Erdoğan inverts reality”

OK, before we start thinking that “the end is nigh”, let’s sit back, take a deep breath, and indulge yours truly in a little “reality check” exercise here.

First, Israel has – at least by my own personal estimation – the sixth most powerful military in the world. I’m not talking in “proportionate”, man-for-man, unit-for-unit terms; I mean in absolute terms. Sixth means sixth. I rate Israel today just ahead of Great Britain, in fact. (I am not being arbitrary about this. I determine relative military capability according to six factors: WMD capability, power projection, strength relative to immediate neighbors, human/economic/technical/natural resource base to support a military apparatus, alliances, and a final factor that can’t be easily quantified, but which is key: national will.)

In particular, I would also submit that Israel has the fourth most powerful air force in the world, a central element in modern warfare, the proof for which was pioneered by Israel in 1967.

In addition to that, along with an established high-tech economic sector, Israel also now has an emerging energy sector.

Unlike the situation that existed during the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, Israel not only has a massive technological advantage over all of the adjacent adversaries she fought in those wars, but also economic advantage, plus the fact that all of her immediate neighbors are either on the brink of falling apart, or are in the process of doing so right now. Not a one of these countries that border Israel – Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt – can be described as a healthy functional state. Jordan is in the best shape, but even they are not doing well. The rest are all basket cases or worse than that.

The only existential threat faced by Israel is the prospect of a nuclear Iran. If that is not prevented, there is a huge problem. But efforts are ongoing. Though disputed in respected quarters, sources I trust are reasonably certain that the alleged Fordo sabotage action of a little more than a month ago was highly effective. I cite as circumstantial evidence for this two things: a) that Obama suddenly decides he wants to visit Israel, right on the heels of the Fordo event, and b) we are now hearing all sorts of noise about “other” options Iran has for obtaining nukes: e.g., using North Korea as a surrogate, building new facilities to possibly make a plutonium rather than a uranium bomb…all of this is coming out also in the wake of Fordo, and this strikes me as Iran’s way of trying to cover up for a huge setback they apparently suffered….a setback that was not only severe in terms of an isolated incident, but also highlights Iran’s persistent vulnerability to sabotage.

I am not saying at all that Israel is out of the woods on Iran’s nukes, but only that effective efforts seem to be ongoing. Another Israeli source I consider legitimate also assured me not long ago: “…things are always being done about Iran…you may not read about it in the newspapers, but rest assured, we are doing something all the time…”

This leads us to a large part of the reason that the anti-Israel campaign has indeed become so sophisticated in terms of the media/academia/PR war against her. It is because that is mostly all her enemies have left. They can’t beat her on the battlefield, they can’t beat her economically, so what is left is the “stir up the lynch mob” campaign.

We must fight this, of course, but we also have to see this in perspective. It only seems to be effective in places where there is “raw material” in the form of “ambient” anti-Semitism that is used as the basis for stirring up hatred against the Jewish state. Obviously, that describes the Moslem world – which is fast falling apart due to their extreme dysfunctionality at many levels – and Europe. To a lesser extent, we see this in European-based societies such as Canada and the U.S.

But except for Moslem areas – e.g., Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan – Asia is remarkably free of anti-Semitism. China and Israel seem to be drawing closer by the month, Israel has excellent relations with South Korea, vibrant trade with Japan, and others. I could come up with other positive examples, but my main point here is that the bad guys, for all their incredible efforts at corrupting the media, universities, politicians, etc. – which are impressive, no doubt, probably the most extensive effort of this kind in history – are still a very long way from turning the “whole world” against Israel.

The immediate problem that seems to make this problems much worse in this moment is the situation in the United States, what with the most rabidly anti-Israel president in history starting his second term. It is particularly toxic for Israel’s foreign relations to have her supposed “primary” ally treat her like crap. This does not set a good example, and encourages others to do the same, which is the point of the exercise.

The answer to this comes down to the decisive – but elusively hard to quantify – factor of national power that I listed at the beginning of this post: NATIONAL WILL.

In Israel’s case, this means the national will on the part of her leaders to REFUSE to put up with being treated like crap by a country that claims to be her ally. And if said “ally” persists in treating her like crap anyway, FINDING NEW ALLY(IES) THAT WON’T.

Remember, at least the Chinese aren’t anti-Semites…..boy, how they’d love to have unfettered acccess to Isareli military technology….hmmm, for rock solid support in the UN and no grief over the Palestinians, I could see a real deal in the making….

I’m not saying Israel should jump the fence next week. But Israeli leaders need to make it clear that they are willing to if they cannot look forward to being treated with a modicum of respect that one would expect from governments that claim to be her friend. That is a start.

There is hope, people. There is hope. The right choices just need to be made, along with faith in our G-d, and faith in ourselves. There is hope.